Strategy
General Strategy Level 1 Talent Advice Experiment with different talents, but if you are not sure: * Priests should take Magical to make sure they can cast spells that they draw in their opening hand * Wizards should take Cowardly to reset their opening hand. (or Magical ) * Warriors should take Healthy . * Thieves should take Preparation to reset Find Treasure. * Monks should also take Preparation to create a very efficient deck * Paladins and Samurai should take Training since they start with special Attacks in their decks. * Druids should take Smash to scout out the enemies so they can sequence their forms best. * Dragon, Professor and Bard should take Preparation to reset their special abilities. * Finally Assassins, Necromancers, and Rangers are probably best off taking Healthy . Some collected tips from Peter Whelan (the game's creator) from around the web: :Some generic, class independent tips: : 1) Get all the passives. They're not necessary, but they give you more room for error. You probably have them all, except maybe the kill 5 dragons one, but go buy that. : 2) Have a plan. By the end of the first floor you should be able to say "My plan is..." and then only pick up things relating to that plan. So, for example, "my plan is to maximize sword triggers" in which case you get scimitars, another sword, and slashes. Or, "my plan is to kill them on the first turn with fire spells and to use flee when that doesn't work" and then pick up a bunch of base mana, a meteor, and a Jasra's Tome. There was a cool rogue deck posted somewhere early on (one of the first guys outside of the testers to beat the game) that's plan was "Keep my dodge rate very high every turn while they die to poison". He picked up cards that cycled through his deck very fast and a card that drew him a card whenever he dodged so that he could hit all the key things. : 3) Have a plan for the boss. If you don't know what the boss does, check the bestiary. They often do something weird, so it helps to prepare a bit. : source: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3238184&postcount=213 #Be very careful adding cards to your deck. Adding a bad card is worse than not adding a card at all. #Look for synergies. One good way to do that is to find a card you like and build around it. Good examples include Strike, Piety, Electrocute, or Sword. #Cards that are narrow are cheaper than cards that are more general and often more powerful as well. Wrath of God, Mimic, and Colossus Smash are all good examples. #Don’t waste weak monsters. Defensive classes can use low level monsters to heal and everyone can use them to reset cooldowns. Try alternating strong monsters with easy ones to best make use of your cooldown abilities. #Respect the bosses. Always have everything up going in and, if you know what the boss does, try to buy cards that are specifically good in that matchup. #Your deck is dependent on your run – try not to go in with a specific plan and tailor your strategy to what you see. : source: http://www.pockettactics.com/features/winning-ugly-still-winning-peter-whalens-guide-dream-quest/ Some more general tips: * Take advantage of the full heal provided by levelling up. Time your XP gains to provide healing where it's most useful. * Some monsters are much harder/easier against certain decks. It's not necessary to kill all monsters on the level -- consider which ones would weaken you more than their rewards would give. * The background color of the map can give you a hint of who the final boss on that level will be. For example, If the map background is red, and it is level 2, the boss will be immune to fire. Wizard : Wizard decks are usually focused on one or two particular elements: *'Lightning' decks are very mana hungry – Mana Surge is a very high priority and mana management in general is the most important thing here. Lightning decks can often have only one or two kill spells (Electrocutes ) and rely on just building up a huge mana pool to fuel them. *'Fire' decks like having lots of base mana to smooth out draws where you find your powerful spells before your mana cards. Focus less on making sure that your deck is mana-neutral and more on making sure you can cast one volley of spells which will hopefully be enough. Mana Swell (or any spell doubler) is fantastic in fire decks since it allows you to deal enormous damage while conserving mana. *'Frost' spells provide excellent support for the other elements and can also form a viable deck on their own. For a mostly frost deck, consider taking cards like Charm and Bewitch to interrupt the cards that aren’t already being shut down by your freeze. *'Earth' decks are helped by having excellent defenses. Earth plays very well with frost since poison spells are by far the most damaging if allowed to run their course. As a result, you can spend more of your gold on other cards and rely on fewer spells. : Consider taking Flee as the Wizard. A good strategy is to fight a high level monster, flee if your opening hand isn’t very strong (or doesn’t just kill them), and then fight a low level monster to reset your cooldown and try again. Since good wizard hands are so much better than bad wizard hands, you can often defeat someone otherwise far beyond your capabilities this way. In essence, Flee allows you to take a mulligan if you don’t like your starting hand. : I think wizard is my favorite base class for whatever that's worth. All 4 elements are pretty playable, though I usually go mainly 1 and then a bit of a second. Frostbolt and Fireball are enormously powerful on floor 1 and most of floor 2 - 8 damage is a ton and Frostbolt is basically a free turn. : source: http://www.pockettactics.com/features/winning-ugly-still-winning-peter-whalens-guide-dream-quest/ : Some random wizard thoughts:'Wizards have to be incredibly focused - more so than most of the other classes. You have very, very limited card draw, but your individual cards are among the most powerful in the game. I like taking flee and then an equipment slot in the hopes of getting Jasra's Tome or Boots of Speed (or a Staff ) to smooth out my deck a little. Any of the actions that let you filter (sift , inner peace , etc) are great since your individual cards are awesome. : You have to think about randomness mitigation all the time - if you have to pick between sift and holy strike 3 , I'd usually take the sift. Your deck's power level is going to be fine; your level up rewards are excellent, so you just need to filter through the garbage as best you can. And the best way to do that is to minimize the amount of garbage you have =) : Mana cards aren't that great for a wizard - you have the +10 mana combat ability, so if you alternate hard/easy and have reasonable base mana, that'll get you through most early-mid game things except maybe bossess. : Early game, it's pretty straight-forward to power through with Frostbolt or Fireball (or 2 fireballs!) and then grab something like a Meteor or Blizzard off your level 5 level up. Then on floor 2, work to kill a 6 by starting, getting a good hand or fleeing, and then killing a low level if you had to flee and then repeating. Once you hit 6, find the strongest monster on the map and just fry him with your long cooldown. Then kill littler guys to reset and you should be able to get to 7. The floor 2 boss is always easy since you just set up a god-hand and burn him out with your amazing cooldown ability. Generally you can tank a couple of turns or use flee and just one-shot them. Channel -meteor, for example, kills most floor 2 bosses outright with your cooldown. At that point, you get the delete 3 talent and your deck is mostly just kill cards. Again alternating strong/weak and using the uber-cooldown on level 10's, you should have enough money to pick up a tier 3 spell or 2 and wreck floor 3 and the boss. : Be aggressive with the +mana cooldown. If it'll let you cast spells, just use it. It'll come back soon and saving health is usually worth the cooldown. The kill-cooldown on the other hand you should plan around and use on mean things. : That's a little vague and your mileage may vary, but generally as a wizard focus on kill spells and randomness mitigators (filter/draw effects as you see them) and don't play anything else if you have a choice. Spell doublers are pretty good, and I like a mana surge , but generally just 1 unless I have a staff or am electric. The only exception is that defensive cards work really well with poison or frost - charm + frost can make for a pretty unbeatable deck if you can get some deletes or some filtering (or just a good density of frost effects). For floor 1 talents, I like flee , but health is totally reasonable. I generally shy away from mana - you have enough base with the passives to cast fireball and you'll find base mana pretty easily as the game goes on (and you have the first cooldown for the first boss). : Also, the normal caveat applies: there are lots of options and I've been successful with a pretty wide range of wizard decks, so if you've got something that works for you, go for it! : source: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3266124&postcount=522 :'Wizard Run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ0dPm5563U : : Warrior #Use Smash liberally. Knowing which monsters are around and what bonuses there are will let you plan a route that optimizes your cooldowns. #Lean heavily on double strike (your level 3 cooldown). Copying a card is very powerful; early it is mostly used to copy an elemental slash, but late it can copy a powerful equipment or something else even more devastating. Similarly, it’s important to have something excellent to copy, so you’re often better taking a single expensive card than a couple of cheaper ones. #The two primary warrior archetypes are epitomized by Colossus Smash and Slash. *'Colossus Smash '''decks try to find particularly powerful cards to use with double strike while avoiding action cards. On floor 1, lean mostly on health and deletes and let the doubled Colossus Smash carry you through. On floor 2, Holy Strike , Pierce , and especially Wrath of God are very strong. Finding utility in attack cards is important to these decks. *Slash decks rely on maximizing the Sword by getting as many triggers as possible. On floor 1, picking up another Sword, Slashes, and some elemental strikes is helpful. Scimitars and Gauss’ Hourglass are also great. These decks can also play some action cards, though they’d like as few as possible since action cards can’t trigger the Sword. The real payoff for these decks comes from the floor 3 Cruel talent, as well as cards that weaken your opponent, causing them to take additional physical damage from each source which makes the sword triggers enormously powerful. : source: http://www.pockettactics.com/features/winning-ugly-still-winning-peter-whalens-guide-dream-quest/ : '''Warrior Run': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INhIJXcbsl8 Monk : My monk decks tend to be kind of weird. It's easy to delete most of your bad cards (and then even some mediocre cards). Find at least one good damage source (my last run I found a flame slash 2 on the first floor, but upgrading an attack card, or grabbing a prayer of violence works too) since monks have a terrible starting deck damage-wise. After that, pick up high end cards or things that draw cards. Curse of Weakness , Troll Hide , Invisibility , or any of the permanent (in fight) effects are exceptionally good. Alternatively, use some of the priest-type draw cards along with dice and maybe a dodge to power through your deck every turn along with exceptional defense. : source: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3257354&postcount=430 Priest : The priest is fundamentally a resource management class. There are a couple of ways to build it, but in each case it's really important to be able to juggle actions, mana, cards, and time. Priests get reasonable access to mana (almost as much as a wizard), but limited access to actions, so they need to be somewhat careful. Generally priests will go through their deck several times in a fight, so it's important to have enough resources to accomplish that. They have a ton of support cards and few damage cards to enable this playstyle - the support cards let them make a lot of decisions and balancing damage and support is pretty tricky. : source: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3256710&postcount=424 #Priest decks need a careful balance. Since you’re likely to go through your deck quickly, you need to have your mana costs balanced against the amount of mana you generate. Similarly, you need to make sure that your offense and defense are both reasonable – a little more offense can often take pressure off an overtaxed defense. #Priests have the most in-combat decisions of any of the base classes, so it’s important to understand your enemy and decide early on in the fight whether you want to make it long or short. #Priests archetypes have more of a gradient than other classes, generally based on how mana hungry you want your deck to be. #Mana-hungry priests need high level mana cards. Consider using your first talent to upgrade the Mana 1 that you start with. Good spells include Haste and Bless early and powerful finishers like Absorb Vis late #Mana-light priests generally spend their gold on action cards instead. Wisdom can power most of your early spells like Heal or Mind Sear . Early game deck thinners like Inner Focus are great, as are defensive cards like Extract and Curse of Weakness . These decks tend to play most of their cards each turn (or at least see most of their cards each turn) which allows cumulative effects like Curse of Weakness to be very powerful : source: http://www.pockettactics.com/features/winning-ugly-still-winning-peter-whalens-guide-dream-quest/ Thief # First and foremost, look for things to smooth out your deck. Circle and Protean are very important pickups. In the same vein, it’s important to get a second base action as early as possible, whether from a level-up or from a shop. # There are two primary archetypes – Backstab and Strike. #* The backstab deck likes lots and lots of action cards of various types, especially free ones (cards that don’t cost actions and draw you a card). Cards like Swiftness , Alacrity , and Jab are the heart of this deck. You don’t need too many base actions since you’re spending your gold on Swiftnesses and Alacrities and going through your deck very fast. Good later cards include Preparation (to double the damage of your finisher) and Dice (a double-strength Backstab). #* The Strike deck relies on a couple of high level Strike cards to do most of the damage. It needs lots of base actions, as a rule at least enough to play the highest level of Strike. Deletes are very important for this deck – you just want to play your Strikes. Also, Desperate Strike , Mimic , or other cards that copy the Strikes at a lower action cost are phenomenal. Later upgrades are mostly ways to take advantage of your large base action count – Coup de Grace and Darting Daggers are two examples that directly convert actions into damage. # Thieves have a very hard time with physical resistant monsters. Try to pick up an elemental slash card on the first floor or a Pierce on the second to combat them. Since you go through your deck very quickly, just one (or possibly two) is often enough. : source: http://www.pockettactics.com/features/winning-ugly-still-winning-peter-whalens-guide-dream-quest/ :Thief Run:'' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gqGlmK2Lrw'' :'' '' Professor :Talents which synergize well with the Professor's unique playstyle include: Cowardly (being able to flee from powerful enemies, e.g. bosses, means you can steal multiple cards from them), Preparation (reset the Make Camp ability), Crumble (in combination with Cowardly, you can steal 3+ cards from the boss on a floor), Copy (copy a particularly great card), Polymorph (to steal cards not available from monsters on the current floor). Dragon If you look closely at the possible Devour rewards, you'll notice that not all card types can be obtained via Devour. As a result, not all strategies are equally suitable for Dragons. For instance: Mana cards cannot be obtained via Devour. One does get more starting mana by devouring magical creatures, but without obtaining mana cards by other means (via level-up rewards or Hoard), there's insufficient mana in one's deck to cast all these spell cards. It's common to end up with lots of tier 3 spells like Freeze in one's deck, without sufficient mana to cast them. In contrast, other things are very easy to obtain via Devour, e.g. actions, equipment slots, or extra health points. Samurai Samurai is a combination of attack cards and spell cards. Whether your focus is attack or spell cards it’s always important to have a little bit of both. Main Suggestions # Something that I always try to do as Samurai is to upgrade my Sourcerous Strikes and get 1 or 2 more. Get copies using talents or buying them from shops. These cards should be your primary source of mana. If you want to get mana cards, I recommend elemental charges like Stone Charge or Flame Charge . Getting the Overload card can allow you to unleash a very powerful kai strike. # One of your more important goals as a Samurai is to get rid of your 1 damage attack cards as they are pretty useless later in the game, so don’t be afraid to spend a little gold at monasteries to get rid of those weak cards. It’s okay to keep 2 damage attack , but its recommendable to either forget them or upgrade them. You will often be offered the choice to upgrade two cards after leveling up. If your Sourcerous Strikes are all upgraded, you can upgrade those 2 damage attack cards. # Your passive heals you completely after fighting a monster of equal or higher level as you. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about losing too much health as you’re often going to get it back. This doesn’t mean you should fight monsters that are too strong though, stay within a reasonable range. # I usually go for cards that draw more cards so that I can cycle through my deck quickly like Wrath of God , Rallying Strike or Haste . Getting 10-30 mana in one turn from Sourcerous Strikes is really useful to cast spells and to use your unique ability. You should keep your deck relatively small. I recommend keeping your deck at 15-20 cards. None of these cards should be regular 1 damage attack cards. # For equipment, the staff is really good since you’ll deal 3 more damage everytime you Sourcerous Strike. Pendant is good synergy with staff, but it’s not as good late-game. Sword , Donnershwert , and Poison Dagger may be a good option too if you have an attack-heavy deck. # Avoid any action cards. You could get one action card like Stoneskin which provides useful damage reduction, but the Samurai doesn’t use or need action cards to succeed. # I recommend getting a few health or defense cards just to keep you going through tough matchups. I also recommend getting at least 4 base mana since most good spell cards cost 4 mana. This is in case you draw a spell card before you get any Sourcerous Strikes. # In terms of Talents, I usually go training on the first floor and copy on the second. These are both to get the Sourcerous Strikes to their strongest. The last two can be anything that may seem useful at the moment. If you still have many 1 damage attack cards, you could get Purify to get rid of those. Healthy will never be a bad choice, but other talents may be more useful. # If your deck is low on spell cards and really heavy on attack cards, avoid fighting Wisps , Sirens , or Banshees '. Your hardest match ups will be 'Sphynx , Hands of Glory , '''and Clones . Unless you are confident you have a good deck, you should try not to fight these. # If you go for a spell-heavy deck, try to focus on one or two elements. I found the best to be the Electrocute , Shock , Storm , and Mana Swell deck. Just remember that kai strike depletes all mana so make sure to use Electrocute before your kai strike. The cards you get as a spell Samurai should be similar to those of a Wizard. The only difference should be your '''Sourcerous Strikes. Recommended Cards Attack cards * Sourcerous Strikes (IMPORTANT) ** Recommended amount is 4 and all upgraded to max * Attack (3 dmg recommended) ** 1 or 2 * Slash or Rallying Strike * Sundering Strike * Holy Strike * Pierce ** *maybe: Elemental Slashes (flame, frost, corrosive, storm) Spell cards * Any elemental spells are good, but don't get too many unless you’re going for a specific spell deck. I don’t recommend getting Jasra’s Jarring Jolt . For examples: ** Acid Rain , Acid Lance , Blight (acid) ** Meteor , Fireball , Conflagration (fire) ** Freeze , Frost Bolt , Blizzard (water) ** Electrocute , Shock , Storm (air) * Cards that draw other cards: ** Wrath of God ** Haste ** Divine Inspiration ** Mind Sear * Soulfire * Earth , Fire , Frost , Storm shape * Ward and/or Blur * Any healing spells are good too Mana cards *note: you shouldn't get more than maybe 2 or 3 of these since your Sourcerous Strikes '''should be enough * Wisdom * Inspiration * Overload * Elemental charges (order of usefulness): *# stone *# frost or flame *# static * Mana Swell Action cards '''One or two action cards that provide armor or damage reduction should be enough * Stoneskin * Shield Wall Summary The Samurai is essentially a glass cannon that uses mana and attacks to its advantage. You want to keep your deck small so you can cycle through it quickly. Because the samurai lacks in defense, you should get a few armor or health cards. The Samurai's combat ability. Kai Strike. is one of his hardest hitting abilities so don't forget to use it. You will rarely run out of mana if you follow the '''Sourcerous Strike '''suggestion, so it'll be easy to use spells constantly. I beat my first dungeon using Samurai and he isn't a very difficult character to play. He doesn't require too much thinking so he is a good class to start working with. It isn't too difficult to unlock him either so its easy to start playing as him.